2024 Reintroduces Fake Electors for Donald Trump, Including Those Charged in 2020
In 2024, fourteen individuals known as fake electors, who were part of former President Donald Trump’s 2020 effort to disrupt election outcomes, will again participate as electors. Several of these individuals are currently facing criminal charges.
Thanks to the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee’s involvement, Republican state parties in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Nevada have selected 14 of the 84 fake electors from the 2020 election to serve once again. Wisconsin’s electors will not be revealed until early October due to a legal settlement that prevents unauthorized Wisconsin 2020 electors from retaking their roles.
States like Arizona and Georgia, where fake electors also submitted fraudulent certificates declaring Trump the winner, have not included any of the repeat electors from 2020 in their slates this year.
Among the 14 returning electors are notable party leaders, such as the chairman of the Nevada Republican Party and the Pennsylvania Republican National Committeeman, along with several current or former county party chairs.
Rick Hasen, Director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, expressed concern, stating, “It’s politically and democratically troubling that individuals who may have engaged in illegal actions to undermine the 2020 election results are still involved in politics.”
While some electors might have believed they were just a backup in case of a legal change, Hasen pointed out that “some allegedly knowingly took part in criminal activities.”
Efforts to reach the 14 repeat electors for comment by YSL News were unsuccessful.
The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee also did not respond to requests for comments.
Trump is currently facing four felony counts in Washington, D.C., tied to leading conspiracies aimed at overturning the 2020 election results and disenfranchising millions of voters. Although he sometimes acknowledges losing the 2020 election, he continues to promote the false narrative that the election was “stolen” from him and has not committed to accepting the results of the upcoming 2024 election unconditionally.
Ongoing Charges
Legal charges have been filed against the fake electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada, as well as some associates of Trump.
Progress on some of these cases has been slow. For instance, a judge in Maricopa County scheduled a tentative trial date for Arizona’s fake electors for January 5, 2026. The Arizona state GOP did not nominate any 2020 electors for the current election. Meanwhile, in Nevada, the state is appealing to the supreme court after a lower court dismissed the fake electors’ case on jurisdictional grounds.
Despite this, Hasen notes that potential electors might reconsider signing such fraudulent certificates this time around. “Anyone approached to engage in shady activities this election might reflect, ‘Hmm, last time, these individuals faced indictment, so perhaps I should refrain from that,'” he commented.
Michigan
The Michigan Republican Party has renominated the highest number of fake electors. Six individuals who appeared on a false certificate claiming that Trump had won Michigan are on the 2024 slate of 15 electors released by the Michigan Secretary of State: Amy Facchinello, John Haggard, Timothy King, Marian Sheridan, Hank Choate, and Meshawn Maddock, a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.
In the 2020 election, Trump lost Michigan by approximately 154,000 votes.
All six aforementioned individuals are currently facing criminal charges, though their trial dates have yet to be set and are not anticipated to take place this year.
David Kallman stated that the unresolved charges from 2020 should not influence the selection of electors for the 2024 election. Choate has pleaded not guilty.
“This is a different election year. The incidents regarding the 2020 election are not really relevant here,” he explained. “I don’t believe this impacts the criminal case in any way.”
Kallman noted that Choate was not aware of any wrongdoing in 2020. He mentioned that Trump’s lawyers informed the electors that the certificate would only be activated if Trump’s campaign succeeded in getting a court ruling to reverse the election results in Michigan or if the state legislature intervened.
“My client was assured by trusted attorneys at that meeting that this wouldn’t come into play unless either of those conditions was met,” Kallman added.
He highlighted that the electors were only shown the page where they needed to sign their names and not the page that falsely stated they had voted at the Capitol and that Trump had won.
Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania Republican Party submitted a list of presidential electors to the state’s Secretary of State’s office, which included five former fake electors: Bill Bachenberg, Bernadette Comfort, Ash Khare, Pat Poprik, and Andy Reilly. The state has 19 electoral votes. Trump lost Pennsylvania in 2020 by around 80,000 votes.
Reilly, who is also the Republican National Committeeman from Pennsylvania, was part of this group.
In Pennsylvania, electors did not agree to sign the fraudulent certificate in 2020 unless it explicitly stated that their votes wouldn’t be counted until the courts ruled in Trump’s favor. As a result, these electors have not been charged with any crime.
Khare, who has served as an elector since 1990, expressed to YSL News in April his support for adding that stipulation.
“We wanted to ensure that we weren’t participating in anything illegal,” he stated.
Nevada
The Nevada Republican Party has renominated Michael McDonald, the state party chair, along with Jesse Law, the chairman of the Republican Party of Clark County. Both of them signed the 2020 certificate, even though Trump was defeated in Nevada by 154,000 votes. The state has six electoral votes.
McDonald, a long-time ally of Trump and currently a senior adviser for the 2024 Trump campaign, along with Law, were indicted in Nevada. However, the case was dismissed due to questions about whether it was filed in the appropriate county, and Secretary of State Aaron Ford, a Democrat, has appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Trump lost Nevada by over 30,000 votes.
New Mexico
The New Mexico Republican Party has renominated Deborah Weh Maestas, the former state party chair. New Mexico has five electoral votes, but its involvement in the scheme was deemed unusual. The state is not considered a swing state and has backed Democrats in every presidential election since 2008. Trump lost New Mexico by around 100,000 votes in 2020.
Similar to Pennsylvania, the 2020 New Mexico electors also refused to sign unless the forms clearly stated that their votes wouldn’t be counted until a court ruled in Trump’s favor. The New Mexico electors have not faced any criminal charges.
A significant legal shift since 2020
Electors typically attract little attention. In a presidential election year, each party puts forward a list of state electors who pledge to support their presidential candidate in the Electoral College if that candidate wins. Usually, party leaders like county party chairs or local officials are elected. Their names must be submitted to the state ahead of the election and are publicly accessible.
However, in 2020, GOP officials from seven states won by President Joe Biden submitted fraudulent electoral certificates to Congress, claiming that former President Donald Trump had actually won. These documents aimed to misleadingly convince lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence that there were legitimate doubts over the election’s outcome in crucial states.
The House Select Committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack and Trump’s actions to retain power post-election discovered that the fake electoral certificates were part of a coordinated plan by Trump’s allies to hinder Congress from certifying the election results. Their goal was to compel Congress to revert the results.
Pence ultimately refused to acknowledge or even consider the “alternate” electoral slates.
Jonathan Diaz, Director of Voting Advocacy for the Campaign Legal Center, believes it is unlikely that such a plan would succeed again. In 2022, Congress enacted the Electoral Count Reform Act, which modified the criteria so Congress can only acknowledge electoral certificates that are signed by the governor or another official sanctioned by state law during the vote counting session on January 6. Additionally, the requirements for members of Congress to challenge a state’s results were increased from one representative and one senator to one-fifth of each chamber. Furthermore, in 2023, the Supreme Court’s decision in Moore v. Harper clarified that state legislatures have limited authority to overturn election outcomes.
“It is going to be significantly more challenging for a group of fake electors to pull off the same tricks they tried in 2020,” Diaz remarked. “The 2022 law was specifically designed to close the loopholes that were present in the prior process because it was outdated, ensuring that the kind of manipulation we witnessed at the joint session of Congress cannot happen again.”
YSL News reporter Erin Mansfield contributed to this article